Ongoing efforts to increase the efficiency and output of production operations have resulted in a continuing focus on how materials are moved with respect to the operations being performed. Often materials are moved on conveyors between operating stations. While conveyors are very useful in facilitating the automation of a manufacturing facility, conveyors do have a disadvantage of consuming significant floor space. Further, conveying materials up and down to different elevations requires even more floor space. For example, inclined conveyors are used to move material to different elevations. Inclined conveyors can take the form of linear or spiral conveyors, and both devices consume significant floor space area. Therefore, the floor space requirements of current conveyor devices limit potential benefits and economies in a production facility design. For example, they limit how existing conveyors at different elevations are to be interconnected. Further, they limit the potential benefit of attempting to stack conveyors at different elevations to provide more floor space for processing equipment.
As an alternative to the above, it is known to mount a roller conveyor top onto a stationary lift table. While such lift tables have an advantage of reducing the floor space consumed in order to move a conveyor section between elevations, there are limitations to their application. For example, known lift tables have the lifting device, for example, a cylinder located beneath the lift table and connected to the scissors-linkage. Such a construction often limits the minimum height of the assembly comprised of the lift table and the roller conveyor top.
Consequently, there is a need for a material handling system that does not have the limitations and disadvantages of known inclined conveyor devices for moving materials between different elevations.